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Milley says civil war in Afghanistan 'likely' after US withdrawal, could lead to 'reconstruction of al Qaeda'

Jennifer Griffin, Caitlin McFall
Fox News
Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
Milley
© Fox News
US General Mark Milley
In an exclusive television interview with Fox News' Jennifer Griffin in Ramstein, Germany Saturday, General Mark Milley was asked about the military operation to process 17,000 Afghan evacuees headed for the U.S.
"What they're doing as people come in, they're getting their names registered. They're doing the biometrics. They check their irises. They do their fingerprints. They take a full facial photo."
He referenced not only the Department of Homeland Security but officials in the FBI, USAID, the State Department, and Customs and Border Protection.

The general - who traveled to Germany to thank troops from the U.S. European Command that scrambled to set up the massive tent city on the tarmac of the largest U.S. Airbase and transport hub in Europe - said the base had already processed about 30,000 individuals. Milley said he is "very comfortable" with the measures being taken to approve the entry of individuals into the U.S.

The general was asked whether the U.S. is safer following the complete withdrawal from Afghanistan but said it was too soon to tell:
"My military estimate is...that the conditions are likely to develop of a civil war. I don't know if the Taliban is going to [be] able to consolidate power and establish governance."

Comment: See also:

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Russia's Communists are flirting with faith in God but, in upcoming elections, can they hope for a miracle?

Paul Robinson
RT
Sun, 05 Sep 2021 16:12 UTC
russia communist party orthodox church
© AFP / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV; (inset) Sputnik
"Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image." That's according to Russia's first communist leader - Vladimir Lenin. Now though, his successors seem to have very different ideas.

In the aftermath of the 1917 revolution, and during the "Great Terror" of 1937/38, Soviet communists declared war on religious belief, razed churches to the ground and murdered priests by the thousand. Communism's hostility to religion, and particularly to the Russian Orthodox Church, isn't just a matter of historical record - it is etched into the collective memory of the country.

It is therefore somewhat surprising to hear the leader of the modern-day Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), Gennady Zyuganov, put a rather different spin on things. Jesus was the first communist, Zyuganov told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Thursday. "Put Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism next to each other, and you will just gasp... We need to study the Bible," he said.
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NewsReal: The Red Line? Governments Extend Vaccine Mandates to Children


Sott.net
Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
covid vaccines newsreal
© Sott.net
The goalposts keep changing in the 'pandemic crisis'. From reassuring people that children are not at risk from Covid-19, governments have begun ignoring their own scientific advisors' advice to push for vaccinating children against Covid-19.

In response to this, protests are intensifying in scale and scope as parents realize 'parental rights' no longer mean what they used to.

On this NewsReal, Joe and Niall take stock of developments in 'Pandemia' this week, connecting the increasing political 'science' with social turmoil and environmental chaos.


Running Time: 01:55:17

Download: MP3 - 79.2 MB

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Poll shows Biden approval rating on COVID-19 dropping 10 points since late June

Mychael Schnell
The Hill
Sun, 05 Sep 2021 15:54 UTC
biden press conference leaves back turned
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Biden walks away from another round of tough questions
President Biden's approval rating for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic has dropped by 10 points since late June as the delta variant raises concerns and drives up cases nationwide.

In a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, 52 percent of respondents said they approve of the way Biden is handling the pandemic, which is down from the 62 percent of adults who gave him positive marks in late June.

The drop comes as the delta variant, which is more contagious than previous versions of COVID-19, is spreading rapidly throughout the U.S. and is now the dominant strain in the country.

Comment: But, but, 81 million votes!

Actually, the poll is remarkable given that: Trump senior adviser: Polls have 'massive oversampling of Democrats'

More Biden polling fun from the last year or so:

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Dollars

The Biopharmaceutical industry provides 75% of the FDA's drug review Budget. Isn't this a Problem?

John LaMattina
Forbes
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 07:16 UTC
Caroline Chen of ProPublica has written a provocative article challenging the objectivity of the FDA in its approval of new drugs. Entitled: "FDA Repays Industry by Rushing Risky Drugs to Market", Chen contends that the agency is beholden to the biopharmaceutical industry which pays three quarters of the FDA's budget used for the drug review process. This is an astounding number. Is any other federal agency supported to this extent by the industry it regulates? Given this level of support, one might assume that the FDA would bend over backwards to meet the needs of its financial backers.
FDA office
© Al Drago/CQ Roll Call
How did we ever get to the point where private industry is providing so much support for a federal agency? Actually, this all began about 25 years ago, when the U.S. was facing a "drug lag". Because of a lack of resources at the FDA, drugs were being approved at a much slower rate here than in Europe. More than half of all drugs approved in the U.S. had been approved in Europe more than a year earlier. Patients, advocacy groups, pharmaceutical companies, and physicians were all concerned that important new medicines were being denied to Americans.

To solve this problem, Congress enacted the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) of 1992-a mechanism whereby charges were levied on pharmaceutical companies for each new drug application (NDA) filed. The revenues, known as "user fees", were used to hire 600 new drug reviewers and support staff. These new medical officers, chemists, pharmacologists, and other experts were tasked with clearing the backlog of NDAs awaiting approval. In fact, one of the biggest years of NDA approvals occurred in 1996 when the FDA approved 56 new products, largely the result of working through this backlog.

Comment: See also:

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Biohazard

Russia building network of labs working with dangerous viruses to understand pathogens, develop new vaccines & enable testing checkpoints along whole border


RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 13:01 UTC
russia biohazard
© Sputnik / Grigory Sysoev
A mannequin, dressed in a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), stands at the entrance to the laboratory of the Vector enterprise of the State Scientific Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk, Russia.
Work is now underway on building a "sanitary shield" around Russia, held together by a chain of high-tech biological research facilities designed to handle deadly pathogens and develop vaccines against them, Moscow has announced.

Speaking at the New Knowledge conference in the Russian capital on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova praised the project as vital for the country to deliver. The order to establish it came from President Vladimir Putin himself, and officials are now "actively working" on plans for it, she said.

"Today we believe that this project is one of the most important, because this won't be the only pandemic that we will have to face in our lives," Golikova added. The first 15 "high security" laboratories will be up and running by 2024 and will deal with viruses that are "very, very contagious, and lead to fatal diseases," she said. At present, the country only has three such labs, but there are hopes to lift this number to 36 by 2030.

Comment: The threat of being attacked with bioweapons is likely one reason for this huge project, but what could be the other possible motivations? Considering current events in our world, one wonders whether some of those backing this initiative in Russia are also aware of the possibility of outbreaks of other kinds, that history shows have erupted during similarly tumultuous times: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Why the Taliban still can't form a government

Pepe Escobar
The Saker
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
Yakoob/Akundzada
© AFP/KJN
Mullah Yakoob • Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada
It looked like everything was set for the Taliban to announce the new government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after this Friday's afternoon prayers. But then internal dissent prevailed.

That was compounded by the adverse optics of a ragtag "resistance" in the Panjshir Valley that is still not subdued. The "resistance" is de facto led by a CIA asset, former vice president Amrullah Saleh.

The Taliban maintain they have captured several districts and at least four checkpoints at the Panjshir, controlling 20% of its territory. Still, there's no endgame in sight.

Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, a Kandahar religious scholar, is expected to be the new power of the Islamic Emirate when it's finally formed. Mullah Baradar will likely preside just below him as a presidential figure along with a 12-member governing council known as a "shura."

If that's the case, there would be certain similarities between the institutional role of Akhundzada and Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran, even though the theocratic frameworks, Sunni and Shiite, are completely different.

Comment: It will be interesting to observe the remake of Afghanistan by the tribal sectors if certain meddling influences keep hands off, allow it time to heal and implement its course.

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Dollar

From the Notebook - The unintended consequences of COVID-9/11

Tom Luongo
Gold Goats 'N Guns
Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
one maskless
© Unknown
One of the fundamental problems of central planning of any kind is what we systemic thinkers call the 'Law of Unintended Consequences.' It's not really a law but it should be.

You know you're dealing with an 'unintended consequence' of a policy when the politicians, bankers, regulators and their apologists in the media say something like, 'well, you know, no one could have foreseen {fill in the blank}.'

Some of those blanks are:
  • The Housing Bubble of 2005-07 which caused the financial crisis of 2008.
  • The election of Donald Trump after decades of offering false choices to the American Electorate.
  • Most recently the collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban and the U.S.'s ignominious retreat.
These are all events, and there are dozens more in your everyday life if you just begin looking for them, which nobody in charge would ever admit to having considered possible when they embarked on a particular policy but in hindsight were inevitable.

Policies of collective action under the rubric of the State, defined as that entity with the power to point guns at people to enforce their edicts, always result in these unintended consequences. But it's not because those outcomes weren't predictable but rather because they weren't important to the people who implemented them in the first place.

They weighed the benefits as absolute and ignored the costs as trivial things they could, like a bad movie producer, fix in post-production.
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Folder

Classified 9/11 files to be reviewed under Biden's latest executive order after families 'disinvited' him from memorial


RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 21:12 UTC
Model of WTC
© Reuters/Stringer
Model of the World Trade Center at a 9/11 commemoration in 2011• US embassy in Kabul
US President Joe Biden has ordered the Justice Department to release the remaining classified documents on the 9/11 terrorist attacks within six months, after families of victims told him he wasn't welcome to the commemorations.

In a statement on Friday, Biden said he had signed an executive order instructing Attorney General Merrick Garland to conduct a 'declassification review' of the remaining documents, concerning the FBI investigation into the attacks targeting New York City and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001.


Comment: What, if anything, will come of the review? This is one can of worms the US would rather keep closed.

See also:

Families of 9/11 victims tell Biden not to attend memorials until he honors pledge to declassify docs on 'possible Saudi role'

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Attention

Is Zelensky the new Saakashvili? Western armchair revolutionaries are now making the same mistake in Ukraine they did in Georgia

Glenn Diesen
RT
Sat, 04 Sep 2021 12:52 UTC
Activists Ukraine
© Olena Kudiakova/Ukrinform/Bancroft Media/Getty Images
Activists of the National Corps and other organizations march in Kyiv
Media outlets are being shut down. Political opponents are being locked up. A semi-frozen war continues to simmer in the East. And yet, foreign talking heads are still applauding Ukraine's turn to the West as a great achievement.

In a recent article, 'Ukraine's Dangerous Success', veteran Moscow critic Edward Lucas argued that "Ukraine's almost unimaginable progress since 1991 is a nightmare for Russia." The crux of his argument is that the country's stance toward Ukraine is not dictated by Kiev's domestic anti-Kremlin posture. Russia, he says, is fearful that the success of Ukraine can undermine the country's legitimacy at home.

The argument is almost identical to that of an article written two months earlier by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's former prime minister. Yatsenyuk argues that NATO expansionism is not driving Russia away from the West, but that failure to expand the bloc will be a victory for President Vladimir Putin.
"In order not to lose Russia forever, the West must do everything possible and more to integrate Ukraine and other countries in our region into a United Europe, and therefore into NATO and the EU. This is exactly what Mr. Putin fears because Ukraine's freedom means something more than our national interests. It proves that Russia too can be free and that Putin is not indispensable."
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